Munich-based SE3 secures €27.04 million to bring spatial intelligence to Europe’s autonomous defence systems

SE3, a Munich-based spatial intelligence provider for autonomous systems, today announced that it has raised €27.04 million ($30 million) in Series A funding. 

The round was led by Accel, with participation from Keen, Lakestar, and Seedcamp. The company plans to use this capital to grow its engineering, commercial, and operations teams and prepare to fulfil additional contracts as it scales. It also intends to strengthen its presence in Germany and Ukraine, open an office in the UK, and plans to expand further across Europe. Its immediate focus remains defence, with plans to explore robotics, emergency response and other civilian applications for demanding environments from 2027.

Lukas Köstler, CEO and co-founder of SE3, said, “Working in defence means our technology has to deliver under pressure in the field. We keep that responsibility front of mind in everything we do, working closely with the people who rely on our systems when it matters. Ultimately, today’s funding will get us closer to providing the spatial intelligence technology needed across Europe to protect a free and secure future.”

SE3 was founded in 2023 by Lukas Köstler (CEO), Simon Klenk (CTO), and Chief Science Officer Professor Daniel Cremers. It spun out of Cremers’ computer vision lab at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), where Köstler and Klenk were working on PhDs in computer vision and robotics. Professor Cremers holds TUM’s chair for computer vision and AI, and is a recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Germany’s most prestigious research award.

SE3 is building the spatial intelligence technology that enables machines to perceive, reason and act autonomously in the physical world. The company claims to bring AI to the physical world. It combines computer vision and AI to help machines turn sensor data into spatial understanding, enabling autonomous operation. The German startup states that it is developing its technology for complex environments where systems must work reliably, including when satellite navigation is disrupted.

The company’s primary focus is European defence, where investment in sovereign technology is rising amid rapid geopolitical shifts. “The EU aims to mobilise €800 billion in defence spending by 2030, with plans for a European Drone Wall to defend its Eastern Flank. Here, and in Ukraine – where SE3 is already deployed – large drone fleets stretch the limits of human supervision, while electronic warfare disrupts satellite navigation. As a result, autonomy is now critical to defence systems, and spatial intelligence has become essential for it to work,” SE3 mentioned in the press release. 

SE3 notes that its platform-agnostic technology serves as the spatial-intelligence software layer for unmanned systems. It connects drones and ground vehicles from different manufacturers and fuses their sensor data into a shared 3D picture of the environment, enabling full spatial awareness and understanding. 

It further explains that the software intelligently operates the swarm, optimising behaviour, routes, and positions for each system based on its understanding of the terrain. Operators can command all functions via voice commands. The software runs entirely on edge, and systems remain operational in contested environments, SE3 highlighted. 

The company’s technology was built for a defence procurement landscape, with a focus on modularity and interoperability. According to the company, the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) and Germany’s MOSABw programme are making it easier for armed forces to combine systems from different suppliers, driving demand for neutral, independent software that can integrate across manufacturers’ platforms without competing with their unmanned vehicles.

Matt Robinson, Partner at Accel, said, “With exceptional talent from one of Europe’s leading research departments, the SE3 team is uniquely qualified to take on the challenge of building spatial AI for autonomous systems – something defence primes have found so difficult to do. We’re delighted to back Lukas, Simon, Daniel and team as they build sovereign spatial intelligence for Europe.”

SE3 reports that in the last two years, it has shipped thousands of systems and is working on multiple contracts with Ukraine and with Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr. The company is an AI partner to leading defence primes such as HENSOLDT and fast-growing scale-ups like Auterion and ERC System, among others.

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